Perceptions
by bbucking
Summary: "The harsh angles of her jaw and cheekbones contrast violently with curve of her eyes and subtle wave of her shoulder length hair. In this moment, she is neither angel nor demon, but something in between." Spencer meets a hazel-eyed blonde at college who gives her a different perspective on life.


**Disclaimer** - I don't own the characters only their thoughts and actions.

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The first time you see the blonde girl with striking hazel eyes, you swear she is an angel. She's so alive and carefree singing karaoke at a bar that you and your friends snuck into thanks to fake IDs Hanna acquired for the four of you. It's the night before you move into your dorm at Yale and you all made the trip from Rosewood to New Haven in the morning so you could spend one last afternoon and evening together before going your separate ways for college (or in Hanna's case straight to LA to "make it big"). Aria tells you not so discretely to wipe the drool off your face as you stare at the blonde that has you completely entranced.

You don't know what it is about her; the husky tone of her voice, the slow swaying of her hips to the beat, the energy pulsating off of her as her mere presence captures the attention of the entire bar. When she finishes the song and the applause dies down minutes later, Emily whispers in your ear to go talk to the girl. You're not sure if it's the second drink you had, the thrill of underage consumption of alcohol, or the fact that you are suddenly enthralled by a girl, but you can feel your body temperature spike. You know you need to get out of there and get out now, so you tell your friends you're ready to go. Thankfully, after a mild protest from Hanna, you leave the bar; leaving all of your thoughts (or lack thereof) about the blonde behind, in order to have one last great night with your friends.

The second time you see the blonde girl with striking hazel eyes, you swear she is a demon. It has been only a day since your first sighting, and she is in a shouting match with another girl in the hallway of your dorm as you unload your first round of boxes into your new room. The carefree attitude from last night is dead; the smile is a sneer, the laughter is in malice, the eyes have lost their light. You don't hear anything other than swear words tossed between the two before the blonde glances your way to catch you staring. Her eyebrows lift slightly and her eyes widen before she controls her features and glares at you with a tight-lipped smile (or is it a sneer). She pulls the other girl into a room at the end of the hall.

You know the odds are fairly decent for the girl from the bar to go to the same college as you, but to be living in the same dorm, just down the hall; well that seems more than just coincidence. Hanna is calling it fate, as the four of you begin to unpack some of your boxes in the tiny room you will be sharing with some random roommate, but you've never been one to believe in that sort of thing.

The third time you see the blonde girl with striking hazel eyes, you find out her name. You are sitting by yourself in the dining hall on the first Friday of the semester exactly one week since you've moved in. Your roommate went home, but you don't have much to go home to so you've got the room to yourself for the weekend. You hear a tray plop down on the table and look up to see the girl standing behind the chair across from you.

"You're Spencer right?" She asks before taking a seat, clearly not waiting for an invitation. You have no clue how she knows your name, but instead of being creeped out you are surprisingly rather impressed.

"Stalk much?" you respond flatly before taking another bite of your pasta salad. You don't know why she has joined you, nor does she give you any indication.

"Hardly," she scoffs back seeming put off with your non answer. "More like I walk by your room to go to class every day. You don't look like a Jain Yu, so you must be Spencer Hastings." How the hell she knows which room is yours is beyond you. You look across the table at her as she stirs her spaghetti around a fork and you're not sure what to make of her. The harsh angles of her jaw and cheekbones contrast violently with curve of her eyes and subtle wave of her shoulder length hair. In this moment, she is neither angel nor demon, but something in between.

"I'm Quinn Fabray, by the way," she says before putting a forkful of spaghetti into her mouth.

Never being one to beat around the bush you ask, "Why are you sitting with me?" You meant for the question to be biting with accusation, but it ended up sounding more pathetically self-loathing.

"You looked like you could use some company," she answered simply. Now it is your turn to scoff.

"I don't need your pity."

"Good, because you're not getting any from me." Your brain shoots immediately to the gutter and you look down at your partially-eaten dinner to hide the color that is rising to your cheeks. Taking another bite, you stall for time to control your features before responding.

"My roommate went home for the weekend. What's your excuse?" Your tone is harsh and Quinn's lips lift upward to one side as if what you said (or perhaps how you said it) is amusing to her.

"I don't have a roommate?" She responds with a small shrug. It's obviously not a question, but her inflection at the end of her statement makes it seem like one.

"What? There are single rooms in the dorms?" You blurt out, forgetting your pretense of being bothered that she is sitting with you.

"Well no, not technically," Quinn answers after a short laugh at your eagerness. "I'm the Resident Advisor for the west side of our hall. Didn't you go to the dorm cookout on Sunday to meet the staff and your hall-mates?"

"It was optional."

"Right." She stirs what's left of her spaghetti on her plate, but never actually puts any on her fork to eat. "Well, um I did have a slightly hidden agenda when coming to sit here." _Knew it_, you think as she looks up from her plate with her top teeth biting into her bottom lip. You nod for her to go on. "I wanted to apologize for the scene in the hallway during move in day. It was completely unprofessional and I'm sorry you witnessed a lack in my ability to control my emotions." The mechanical pacing of her words makes you wonder if she practiced that apology multiple times or if she has been in a similar situation in the past.

"Don't worry about it. Happens to me all the time."

"You've gotten into multiple loud shouting matches with your ex-girlfriend?"

"Um no. Definitely not," you respond automatically. Quinn arches an eyebrow at you and you have no clue what that action means. Maybe your immediate response offended her. "One of my best friends is gay," you add hoping to make the conversation less awkward.

"One of mine is too," she states plainly, but does not elaborate.

"And you are?" Quinn's eyebrows scrunch together as she studies you silently before responding.

"A junior, double majoring in Theater and English Literature. You?" That was definitely not what you were asking and you are curious as to why she changed topics, so you decide to play along.

"Freshmen majoring in I don't know what to do with my life."

"So undeclared?"

"In both college and life, yes."

"You know what's weird?" Quinn asks, finally dropping her fork onto her plate though she hadn't taken a bite in over five minutes. You shake your head encouraging her to continue. "How society and our upbringing play such a large role in our subconscious reactions to issues society deems not the norm."

"What do you mean?"

"If my shouting match would have been with an ex-boyfriend, you probably would have agreed with me and not brought up the fact that your friend is gay. You would not have felt the need to try to relate with me in a roundabout way while indiscreetly saying that you have no problems with what you assume is my sexuality." You think she has a good point so you nod your head slightly as she leans forward, elbows on the table, and continues.

"A male and female relationship is the norm in this society and when people come across something that is not the norm, they are either against it, indifferent to it, or embrace it. While I am no doubt happy you fall into the last category, wouldn't society be better if there were no norm in sexual preference to begin with? There would be no pressure to react a certain way because whether you're straight, gay, bi, trans, the labels would no longer matter in society and it wouldn't be a big deal."

"But what if it was a big deal?"

"In what way?" Quinn's head is titled as she asks and you set down your fork on your still mostly full plate in preparation of your response.

"Let's say your ideal society exists and there is no norm for sexual preference. This would mostly mean that the media portrays all types of people and relationships fairly equally. Now if what you're saying is true, I can no longer assume that statistically speaking, the majority of the people I encounter are going to be sexually interested in the opposite gender. So now each person I encounter, male or female, I believe has the possibility of being attracted to me."

"That already happens every day," she says with an eye roll that is simultaneously endearing and makes you want to smack the side of her head.

"That may be true. But in our society, I am inclined to believe that it will be mostly males that are physically attracted to me," Quinn lets out cough that sounds strangely like bullshit so you add, "unless otherwise notified." You can tell by the way she barely shakes her head and fights to keep the smirk off her face that she doesn't agree with you in the least bit.

"What are you trying to say here?" she asks.

"My point is that in your ideal society, I would have no idea on who would be interested in me. How would I be able to know the difference between a male or female who wanted to be friends with me versus someone who wanted to be romantically involved with me. Without that assumption that most males are attracted to females, I would be at a much larger disadvantage." This time Quinn doesn't stop her head from shaking in disagreement, but the smirk is replaced with a smile that almost looks like pity.

"It's not necessarily about who is interested in you," she responds, "but who you are interested in. In my ideal society, there are no norms, thus it is socially acceptable to like whoever you want to like. So really, you are at a much larger advantage because your pool of possible relationship partners has increased due to the absence of societal norms."

"Just because your society has a larger dating pool doesn't mean that my sexual preferences have changed. I would still be attracted to the same people I am attracted to in today's society."

"Perhaps, but in the ideal society you wouldn't be raised to believe that a certain sexual preference is the norm. In this society, you may be physically attracted to people you wouldn't have been in today's society because there are no expectations. People chose their partners based on their sexual preferences not on what society deems and upbringings suggest their sexual preference should be."

"I think my four ex-boyfriends would agree that even in your ideal society that I would still prefer males," you state as if that is proof enough to settle the manner. Quinn however seems to think differently.

"Have you ever been with a female?"

"No."

"Then how do you know that you prefer males?"

"I don't need to jump off a cliff to know the landing is going to hurt."

"But if you never jump off the cliff, you will never know if you can fly."

"I can't fly. Don't have the hollowed out bone structure like birds."

"You're lack of imagination and pessimistic viewpoint is rather reminiscent of my high school years."

"Back when you had a realistic view of the world?"

"Back when I was in denial about being gay."

She picks up her tray and heads over to the trash area giving you one last look over her shoulder before she exits the dining hall. By the time the door swings shut, you have enough sense to close your gaping mouth and be finished with your half-eaten dinner, your appetite suddenly lost.

The fourth and fifth times you see the blonde girl with striking hazel eyes, it's merely a wave in the hallway as she passes your door on the way to class and a smile from across the dining hall as you eat dinner with your roommate. The sixth time, it's an unplanned run in while you are viewing photographs at the local art gallery. This leads to a planned seventh time when you view Yale's theater class production of _Anything Goes, _which Quinn stars as one of the Reno's Angels (she claimed she was Virtue). Afterwards you go to the Starbucks on campus, and you rave about her performance. You also come clean about knowing she could sing and dance from seeing her do karaoke at the bar to which Quinn blushes as she mutters a soft thanks before reprimanding you for going to a bar illegally.

The eighth, ninth, and tenth times, are scheduled meetings, once a week, in the study area near Quinn's room. She is supposed to be editing your midterm assignment for your Literature Analysis course, but you two always seem to end up getting side tracked. You complain about your Macro Economics professor that makes you write a five page essay each week while Quinn rants about the freshmen on her side of the hall that she had to write up for a noise violation.

The fourteenth time you see the blonde girl with striking hazel eyes, you think that in her ideal society you might just be (okay definitely would be) romantically attracted to her. Quinn has dragged you outside to bask in the first snowfall of the season. When you look at her, snowflakes resting atop her blue beanie, her arm interlinked with yours, you think of all the characteristics that you find attractive in men. Intelligence, humor, determination, athleticism, competitive, and of course being easy on the eyes is always a bonus. Quinn easily fits into every category of what you look for in a male, so perhaps if you were raised to pursue people you were interested in regardless of gender then maybe you would pursue Quinn. The sixteenth time, you almost wish you were raised in her ideal society so you would have the courage to pursue her.

Somewhere between the twenty-third and twenty-sixth time, you realize that maybe her ideal society isn't too far off from today's society. Or maybe you have changed your perception on today's society. Either way you've decided that you really like the feel of her hand in yours as you stroll around campus the night before you both part for winter vacation. Quinn rambles about the history of the library as you pass by the building, but you hear every word without listening. You can't focus on her words when your brain wondering if Quinn is already living in her ideal society and if maybe she will let you join her. You don't voice your thoughts, instead relishing in the fact that she invited you on the walk and after you accidently brushed the back of your mitten-less hand against hers, she took the initiative to hold on in order to keep them warm. Your hand and brain have long since overheated, but as your heart simmers at a resting medium temperature, you don't let go.

You lose count of the number of times you see the blonde girl with striking hazel eyes as winter slips into spring. The lines between realism and idealism are blurry and perhaps society was never really the issue. Sure, it influences your decisions and perceptions, but it doesn't change your feelings or ideas. Society, your parents, or your idiotic Western Religions professor can't determine who you are or who you fall in love with. The only thing those inherent societal influences do is lead you to make assumptions about people or concepts or lifestyles that you may know nothing about. You don't want to make assumptions about Quinn anymore. You want to know everything.

* * *

The first time you saw her, you thought she was an angel. The second time you saw her, you thought she was a demon. Through late night walks, elaborate disagreements, theological debates, and eight hour study sessions, you learn that she is both; a mixture of good and bad, of right and wrong. She greets you with your morning cup of coffee and a quick peck on your lips, interlocking your fingers as she walks you to class and you know that Quinn is neither angel nor demon. She is a human; a human just like you.


End file.
